Taking care of today’s business

The musical group Brother to Brother plays during the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children 2012 Broadcast for Funds in Dartmouth on Sunday. (CHRISTIAN LAFORCE / Staff)

Last year, volunteers at the annual Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children telethon set out to raise enough money to build a basketball court.

Donors gave the home $25,000 and now a court sits next to the Akoma Family Centre at the home’s Main Street location just outside Dartmouth.

This year’s telethon, held at Nova Scotia Community College’s waterfront campus in Dartmouth on Sunday afternoon, resulted in $27,000 in pledges toward building a new playground.

With 10 volunteers answering phones and a small army of performers entertaining telethon viewers, the four-hour fundraiser kicked off on the Eastlink channel at 2 p.m.

“What we raise is going toward helping the children that are in our care,” Sylvia Parris, chairwoman of the home’s board of governors, said in an interview as the telethon began. “We’re hopeful that people will focus on … the good work that the home is doing.”

The centre, which receives funding from the provincial Community Services Department, houses up to 12 children, with an emphasis on keeping together siblings placed in foster care.

The home opened in 1921 and this is the 81st telethon. The earliest fundraisers were on radio.

Parris used to answer phones during earlier telethons and she would often get calls from former residents who told her they got a lot out of their time there.

The home drew a lot of unwanted attention this year as the focus of allegations from former residents who claimed they were abused as children decades ago.

Police are investigating the alleged abuse, there is a planned legal action and there are demands for a public inquiry.

The controversy prompted one Halifax regional councillor, Lorelei Nicoll of Cole Harbour-Westphal, to not take part in this year’s telethon.

Coun. David Hendsbee, who represents Preston-Chezzetcook-Eastern Shore and sits on the home’s board, did volunteer at the telethon again this year.

Like Parris, honorary board member Wanda Thomas Bernard said she hopes people think of the home’s positives in the here and now.

“We have children at the Akoma Family Centre,” Thomas Bernard said. “We have a staff who get up every day and go to work and do the best jobs that they can for the children who are there today.”

Her husband’s father, George Bernard Sr., grew up in the home decades ago and it was a positive experience for him, she said. Thomas Bernard, a professor at Dalhousie University’s school of social work, said the couple makes an annual donation in his memory.

She said a lot of African-Nova Scotians have a lengthy connection with the home, which she considers a community institution.

Many people view the telethon as an annual celebration of the home’s place in the community, said Thomas Bernard.

She also said she has great empathy for the people making abuse claims and hopes they can find a speedy resolution.

Thomas Bernard, a social worker for 37 years, said when she was in training, no one ever discussed child sexual abuse.